


Travelodge

by maddy_does (favefangirl)



Series: carry on countdown 2020 [19]
Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Co-workers, M/M, POV Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch, Sharing a Bed, presumed one-sided attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28056609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/favefangirl/pseuds/maddy_does
Summary: There was only one bed...
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Series: carry on countdown 2020 [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026733
Kudos: 37
Collections: Carry On Countdown 2020





	Travelodge

**Author's Note:**

> Carry On Countdown Day 19, DEC 13: Misunderstandings
> 
> In the four years I've been writing, I've never written a 'there was only one bed' fic, so I felt it was time to rectify that.

“Baz,” Niall hisses. Baz looks over and sees him glaring. Niall nods violently at the pen Baz is holding. He realises he’s been clicking the top frantically for the last minute, and puts it down. He raises his hands in mock surrender. “Jesus,” Niall mutters under his breath, moving his attention back to the spreadsheet in front of him.

“What’s got you so tense?” Dev asks from the desk next to them. Baz looks over and suppresses a repulsed curl of his lip when he sees him shovelling noodles into his mouth with chopsticks.

“David’s sending me to a conference this weekend,” Baz explains, sitting up straighter in his chair and folding his hands on the desk in front of him. He purses his lips as he adds, “With Snow.”

It’s not like he realistically has anything better to do with his weekend. Most people he knows spend the last Saturday before Christmas buying last minute presents and getting wasted at the pub. Baz sent all his gifts weeks ago now, and can get equally as drunk in the comfort of his own living room, thank you very much. The conference isn’t an issue for any dramatic reason like pre-existing plans. The conference itself actually isn’t much of an issue at all - call him a freak but he quite likes work conferences, actually.

No, the issue lies with the company he’s been assigned when he goes. Simon Snow. He is perhaps the world’s most annoying, most incompetent man without competition. He’s clumsy and loud and brash and consistently late on deadlines. The only person in the office who can stand to be around him is Penelope Bunce, and that’s only because generally she’s even louder and more brash. Baz doesn’t mind sacrificing a weekend for work, but he’s less thrilled about the prospect of spending it with Simon Snow.

Dev smirks at him and shakes his head. “What?” Baz demands.

“Nothing,” Dev replies, all innocence, raising his eyebrows and grinning at his computer screen. Naturally, Baz does the mature thing and boots him under the table. “Ah- okay, bloody hell Baz.” Dev pouts, reaching down to rub his shin. “I just think this might be a nice opportunity for the two of you to get well acquainted.”

Baz just huffs in response and flips him the bird. There’s a rumour amongst his friends that he’s obsessed with Snow, which absolutely is not true. They like to tease that all he does is talk about Snow, which is also false. He complains a reasonable amount for someone who is forced to work two desks over from the human disaster that manifests as Simon Snow, and honestly if they were forced to work with him as much as Baz was, they’d all be complaining about him too!

There is the minor set back in his defence, wherein he may actually be half in love with the idiot, but Dev and Niall don’t need to know that particular fact. Hell, Baz would choose not to know it, too, if he could. He’s not exactly thrilled about these  _ feelings  _ he has for someone as unremarkable as Snow. Everything about him is embarrassingly ordinary from his basic blue eyes to the fuckboy style he wears his hair in. He’s so completely mundane that Baz is almost ashamed of himself for feeling this way.

Baz spends much of the trip to the hotel where the conference is being held reminding himself of this fact. There is nothing special about Simon Snow, nothing at all, and so the butterflies and the clammy palms and the fact that Baz can’t stop thinking about him - all of it is futile and stupid, two of the things Baz hates the most. Every time he sees Snow he wills the feelings to go away, only for them to increase tenfold when they’re apart.

Baz knows Simon doesn’t -  _ couldn’t _ \- feel the same way because he met his girlfriend, Agatha, at the Christmas party two years ago. She was beautiful and charismatic and just about what Baz would imagine of Snow’s girlfriend. He hardly mourns that they’ll never have a relationship because he was never naive enough to believe they could. It’s all fine, though, because Baz has known he would die alone longer than Snow has even been in his life. 

When he gets to the hotel - a Travelodge, because of course - Snow is waiting outside, sat on his suitcase, scuffing the toes of his trainers against the gravel of the car park. The setting sun catches in his hair creating a halo of gold around his face which does absolutely nothing to help the case Baz is making with himself against feeling anything more than disdain for him.

“Cheer up Snow,” Baz says as he reaches the other man, “It’s nearly Christmas.”

Simon looks up at him, pulls a face, then rolls his eyes. “They’ve messed up our rooms,” Simon replies, jerking his chin towards the hotel just in case Baz got confused about who 'they' were.

“What do you mean?” Baz frowns. He appreciates that they aren’t the Ritz but they’re surely not that incompetent. 

Simon holds up a room key. “A double,” he says. Baz shakes his head, not following. “They’ve given us a double room.”

Baz freezes. He feels his face warm up and prays his complexion does enough to hide it. He looks up at the hotel and opens his mouth as though to offer a solution, but his brain has about shut down at the thought of sharing a bed with Simon. Of their bodies laying that close together, nothing but a few layers of fabric separating them and-

“I’ll sort this out,” Baz resolves, adjusting his grip on his duffel bag and snatching the room key from Simon as he walks into the hotel. He marches straight up to the girl at the front desk who looks like she can be no older than eighteen. “Excuse me,” he says, sounding every bit like his step-mother. “There seems to have been a misunderstanding. My colleague and I were meant to have been booked into two rooms this evening.”

The girl looks from Baz to Simon who has followed him inside and it standing behind him. She bites her lip then forces a smile. “I’m afraid only one room was booked, sir,” she explains politely.

“Right, but then it should have been two singles, not a double.” Baz counters, spine straightening,

She shoots him that same placating smile and says, “Unfortunately the room booked by your company was one double room, as I explained to your colleague.”

Baz looks over his shoulder at Simon just to glare at him, then turns back to the girl at the desk. “Can’t you just move us?”

“We’re incredibly busy this time of year, sir, it being Christmas and all. This is the only room available for tonight.” 

Baz stares at her, hoping her face will burst into a grin and she’ll tell him this whole thing has been a silly practical joke, and of course she’ll show them to their separate rooms right away. But her face stays in that same strained smile, and Baz start to really worry that she’s being serious.

“Can’t,” he tries, “can’t we just separate the beds?”

“I’m afraid this room has a double mattress,” the girl explains.

Baz has to take a step backwards. What kind of budget hotel has  _ double beds _ ? Since when did they not just push two singles together? Baz flounders for another suggestion, but comes up with nothing, and realises he’s going to have to relent and take this single room with a double bed to share with Simon Snow. Lord above, he’s living a charmed life.

“I can just take the floor,” Simon offers in the elevator on the way up to their floor. Baz frowns at him. “I don’t mind, I’ve slept in worse places.”

Part of Baz wants to interrogate that, to ask when and how and why, but a larger part of him is still trying to process the night’s sleeping arrangements, so he says nothing, just shakes his head. It would be more convenient for Simon to take the floor, he decides. It would defeat the issue of them sleeping together (because good lord, they’re going to be seeping together), but he also knows that despite himself he’d feel guilty for it, and doesn’t really want that on his conscience. What’s more, when they get to the room it becomes apparent that with both of their bags, there’s not even enough space for him  _ to  _ sleep on the floor. 

“It’s fine,” Baz says, decisively. He turns to look at Simon which was a definite mistake because Simon is staring back at him with slightly terrified, big blue eyes that threaten to melt his heart right to mush, sappy bastard it seems he is. “It’s fine,” Baz repeats, “because it’s just one night and we’re both adults.”

Simon nods like he’s almost convinced, which is ironic because Baz definitely isn’t. Regardless, it seems decided that they’ll just share the bed. That’s it. They’ll just share the bed. The two of them will sleep next to each other. Just side by side with only a few inches of space between them. Baz is still telling himself it’s fine, though, and he might’ve actually believed it, if Simon hadn’t entered the room after his shower in just his pyjama bottoms, torso still slightly damp, with drops of water from his curls dripping down his shoulder blades. He looks like something out of a wet dream.

_ I will not sexually harass my co-workers,  _ is the mantra Baz showers to, though with Simon looking like that-  _ No.  _ No. He’s a grown man and he can keep his hands to himself, no matter how outrageously fit he looked. Simon Snow is still nothing special, despite what the crasser parts of his anatomy may be feeling. 

He walks back out into the room feeling strangely vulnerable now he’s in his pyjamas. Snow is sat cross legged at the edge of the bed, aimlessly flicking through TV channels. He looks up when he hears the bathroom door open, and Baz swears he gives him a once-over, though perhaps that’s just his own wishful thinking…

“I didn’t know which side you wanted,” Simon mumbles, looking at the floor. 

“Left,” Baz replies quickly. It’s closest to the escape route, which Baz may well need. If he survives the night it’ll be a miracle. 

Getting into bed is suitably awkward. There’s a debate about how many pillows is too many (Simon leaving only the one on his side of the bed), and then a tug of war for the duvet before they both settle down, stiff as boards on their backs. Baz lays awake and stares at the ceiling long after Simon’s breath evens out. He’s absurdly conscious of his own body, of every limb and every hair and every breath. He’s not comfortable enough to fall asleep in this position but he also doesn’t want to shift and wake Simon. He’s mostly just trying not to think about how domestic this feels, to be falling asleep next to someone, even if under these circumstances, and even if with this level of uncomfortableness.

It’s hours before Baz finally falls asleep, but he does, eventually. The only reason he knows is because he stirs awake the next morning with a face full of hair and the weight of another body pressing against his, eyes blinking blearily open, tensing his muscles just to stretch them. In his sleep-addled daze, his first instinct is to pull the body closer into himself, to have the weight more fully on him. Then he realises what he’s done and his eyes flip open comically wide.

“Mmm, sorry,” Simon mumbles sleepily, right into the hallow of his collar bone, before rolling to the other side of the bed with as little grace as he does everything else with. 

Baz just grunts and affirmation and climbs quickly out of bed, rushing to the ensuite. Inside, he locks the door behind him and falls heavily into it. Snow’s hair had smelled of coconut, and his body had been so warm beneath Baz’s hands - mile after mile of soft skin. There’s no going back from this, Baz realises. He’ll never be able to look at Simon again without thinking about this morning.

He quickly has a wash, making sure to run the water cold to try and get a grip of himself. It doesn’t help, but at least he can say he tried. When he emerges back into the bedroom, Simon has gotten dressed and messily made the bed. He stands sheepishly at one end of the room, holding one of the pillows he’d tossed off the bed the night before in front of himself like a shield. Baz can't help but feel that he'd quite like a shield of his own right now, actually.

“I’m really sorry about…” He looks at the bed and his cheeks flame. 

Baz merely grunts again and prays his own don’t do the same. “We can just forget it all,” Baz offers, knowing full well he’ll not forget a single second.

Simon looks up, eyes searching his face, and Baz could swear they rest on his lips from a moment or two longer than is strictly appropriate. “Okay,” Simon agrees, and Baz attests it to his own overactive imagination.

He grabs his change of clothes from his bag and returns to the ensuite. He glares at his reflection in the mirror and tells it to get a grip. It was all just a misunderstanding, and that’s all it will ever be.

**Author's Note:**

> baz is an unreliable narrator so you can't convince me that dev and niall don't have to have a go about how obsessed he is in he same way penny does to simon. you can't.
> 
> also, baz is definitely a karen, you cannot convince me otherwise about that, either.
> 
> my pacing in this is absolutely all over the place jfc. i definitely didn't do the trope justice.
> 
> anyway, if you wanna leave a comment or a kudos they're much appreciated! especially let me know if there's something you think i forgot to tag! 
> 
> i'm taking prompts! if you're interested please drop the prompt in the comments below. if you do send a prompt be prepared for me to take fifty years to fill it because _uni_ , but i promise i'll try! come say hi on tumblr: [@maddy-does](https://maddy-does.tumblr.com/)
> 
> thanks for reading, have a wonderful existence.


End file.
